Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world

By Robert Pigott BBC Religious affairs correspondent, Amsterdam

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.

The Exodus Church is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands

An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.

It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."

Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

"God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience”

"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."

Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.

A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.

Klaas Hendrikse: "You don't have to believe that Jesus was physically resurrected"

The Rev Kirsten Slattenaar, Exodus Church's regular priest, also rejects the idea - widely considered central to Christianity - that Jesus was divine as well as human.

"I think 'Son of God' is a kind of title," she says. "I don't think he was a god or a half god. I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found inside himself."

Mrs Slattenaar acknowledges that she's changing what the Church has said, but, she insists, not the "real meaning of Christianity".

She says that there "is not only one answer" and complains that "a lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more".

Dienie van Wingaarden, who's been going to Exodus Church for 20 years, is among lay people attracted to such free thinking.

Some believe that traditional Christianity has too restrictive a notion of the nature of God

"I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."

Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."

Churches in Amsterdam were hoping to attract such people with a recent open evening.

At the Old Church "in the hottest part of the red light district", the attractions included "speed-dating".

As skimpily dressed girls began to appear in red-lit windows in the streets outside, visitors to the church moved from table to table to discuss love with a succession of strangers.

Professor Hijme Stoeffels of the Free University in Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion.

"In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.

"Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion."

To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.

They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.

"For me the service is very freeing"Stroom ("Stream") West is the experiment devised by one church to reach out to the young people.In an Amsterdam theatre young people contemplate the concept of eternity by spacing out a heap of rice grains individually across the floor.

"The difference from other churches is that we are… experimenting with the contents of the gospel," says Rikko Voorberg, who helps to run Stroom West. "Traditionally we bring a beautiful story and ask people to sit down listen and get convinced. This is the other way around."

Stroom focuses on people's personal search for God, not on the church's traditional black-and-white answers.

Rikko believes traditional Christianity places God in too restricted a box.

He believes that in a post-modern society that no longer has the same belief in certainty, there is an urgent need to "take God out of the box".

"The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society," he says. "It has to change to stay Christian. You can't preach heaven in the same way today as you did 2,000 years ago, and we have to think again what it is. We can use the same words and say something totally different."

Staphorst, in the Dutch Bible Belt, has a by-law against swearing

When I asked Rikko whether he believed Jesus was the son of God he looked uncomfortable.

"That's a very tough question. I'm not sure what it means," he says.

"People have very strict ideas about what it means. Some ideas I might agree with, some ideas I don't."

Such equivocation is anathema in Holland's Bible Belt, among the large number of people who live according to strict Christian orthodoxy.

In the quiet town of Staphorst about a quarter of the population attends the conservative Dutch Reformed Church every Sunday.

The town even has a by-law against swearing.

Its deputy mayor, Sytse de Jong, accuses progressive groups of trying to change Christianity to fit current social norms.

"When we get people into the Church by throwing Jesus Christ out of the Church, then we lose the core of Christianity. Then we are not reforming the institutions and attitudes but the core of our message."

But many churches are keen to work with anyone who believes in "something".

They believe that only through adaptation can their religion survive.

The young people at Stroom West write on plates the names of those things that prevent earth from being heaven - cancer, war, hunger - and destroy them symbolically.

The new Christianity is already developing its own ritual.

Why does God allow natural disasters?

[from www.bbc.co.uk Jan 19, 2010]

By David Bain
Lecturer in the philosophy department of the University of Glasgow.

At the heart of Haiti's humanitarian crisis is an age old question for many religious people - how can God allow such terrible things to happen? Philosopher David Bain examines the arguments.
Evil has always been a thorn in the side of those - of whatever faith - who believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God.
As the philosopher David Hume (echoing Epicurus) put it in 1776: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"
Faced with this question, Archbishop of York John Sentamu said he had "nothing to say to make sense of this horror", while another clergyman, Canon Giles Fraser, preferred to respond "not with clever argument but with prayer".

I have nothing to say that makes sense of this horror - all I know is that the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that he is with us
Archbishop of York, John Sentamu
Perhaps their stance is understandable. The Old Testament is also not clear to the layman on such matters. When Job complains about the injuries God has allowed him to suffer, and claims "they are tricked that trusted", God says nothing to rebut the charges.
Less reticent is the American evangelist Pat Robertson. He has suggested Haiti has been cursed ever since the population swore a pact with the Devil to gain their freedom from the French at the beginning of the 19th Century. Robertson's claim will strike many as ludicrous, if not offensive.
And even were it true, it wouldn't obviously meet the challenge.
Why would a loving deity allow such a pact to seem necessary? Why wouldn't he have freed the Haitians from slavery himself, or prevented them from being enslaved in the first place? And why, in particular, would he punish today's Haitians for something their forbears putatively did more than two centuries before?
So what should believers say? To make progress, we might distinguish two kinds of evil:
the awful things people do, such as murder, and
the awful things that just happen, such as earthquakes

Would those hailed as brave still exist in a Magical World?
St Augustine, author CS Lewis and others have argued God allows our bad actions since preventing them would undermine our free will, the value of which outweighs its ill effects.
But there's a counter-argument. Thoroughly good people aren't robots, so why couldn't God have created only people like them, people who quite freely live good lives?
However that debate turns out, it's quite unclear how free will is supposed to explain the other kind of evil - the death and suffering of the victims of natural disasters.
Perhaps it would if all the victims - even the newborn - were so bad that they deserved their agonising deaths, but it's impossible to believe that is the case.
Or perhaps free will would be relevant if human negligence always played a role. There will be some who say the scale of the tragedy in natural disasters is partly attributable to humans. The world has the choice to help its poorer parts build earthquake-resistant structures and tsunami warning systems.

A still smoking Krakatoa in 1883, which caused a devastating tsunami
But the technology has not always existed. Was prehistoric man, with his sticks and stones, somehow negligent in failing to build early warning systems for the tsunamis that were as deadly back then as they are today?
The second century saint, Irenaeus, and the 20th Century philosopher, John Hick, appeal instead to what is sometimes called soul-making. God created a universe in which disasters occur, they think, because goodness only develops in response to people's suffering.
To appreciate this idea, try to imagine a world containing people, but literally no suffering. Call it the Magical World. In that world, there are no earthquakes or tsunamis, or none that cause suffering. If people are hit by falling masonry, it somehow bounces off harmlessly. If I steal your money, God replaces it. If I try to hurt you, I fail.
So why didn't God create the Magical World instead of ours? Because, the soul-making view says, its denizens wouldn't be - couldn't be - truly good people.
It's not that they would all be bad. It's that they couldn't be properly good. For goodness develops only where it's needed, the idea goes, and it's not needed in the Magical World.
In that world, after all, there is no danger that requires people to be brave, so there would be no bravery. That world contains no one who needs comfort or kindness or sympathy, so none would be given. It's a world without moral goodness, which is why God created ours instead.
But there is wiggle room.
Even in a world where nothing bad happens, couldn't there be brave people - albeit without the opportunity to show it? So moral goodness could exist even if it were never actually needed.
And, anyway, suppose we agree moral goodness could indeed develop only in a world of suffering.
Doesn't our world contain a surplus of suffering? People do truly awful things to each other. Isn't the suffering they create enough for soul-making? Did God really need to throw in earthquakes and tsunamis as well?
Suffering's distribution, not just its amount, can also cause problems. A central point of philosopher Immanuel Kant's was that we mustn't exploit people - we mustn't use them as mere means to our ends. But it can seem that on the soul-making view God does precisely this. He inflicts horrible deaths on innocent earthquake victims so that the rest of us can be morally benefitted.
That hardly seems fair.
It's OK, some will insist, because God works in mysterious ways. But mightn't someone defend a belief in fairies by telling us they do too? Others say their talk of God is supposed to acknowledge not the existence of some all-powerful and all-good agent, who created and intervenes in the universe, but rather something more difficult to articulate - a thread of meaning or value running through the world, or perhaps something ineffable.
But, as for those who believe in an all-good, all-powerful agent-God, we've seen that they face a question that remains pressing after all these centuries, and which is now horribly underscored by the horrors in Haiti. If a deity exists, why didn't he prevent this?

David Bain is a lecturer in the philosophy department of the University of Glasgow.

Responses:

As an Anglican, I always had presumed that God is too big, if you like, too omnipotent to even vaguely notice humanity, after all we are dust: "from dust you are made and to dust you shall return". Though the thought of that kind of horror being suffered by many innocents - and an apparent loving God is contradicting. However at least I find comfort, and probably most Christians, in the world to come where everything would be good, If you like God repaying his debts for letting us suffer.

Dan, Hampshire

The reason why good does not reduce suffering and evil in the world is simply because he does not exist! Or if he does he does not care about humans at least on a individual basis, I am not sure he cares about them on a species basis. Why does he not look after all the animal species that are facing extinction? Evolution explains must of human behaviour and geology and physics explains most natural disasters. If God intervened, there would be evidence. He would have to thwart the laws of physics or/warn people.

John O'Toole, Sligo Ireland

God made man as his greatest creation. In order for humans to be all they can be we must live in a world like this one. Moral courage can't just be a potentiality, it must be an actuality in all it's complexity for it to mean anything. Also, in order for the world to be able to create and sustain the complexity of life that it has, the crust of the earth must move, must regenerate itself. Thus, earthquakes, tsunamis. All religious people can do in the face of a catastrophe is to do what we can to alleviate the suffering and possibly create a world where these sorts of things have much less impact. Isn't the real tragedy of Haiti the poverty that has blighted the island, that lead to substandard buildings and poor infrastructure? This is as much a man-made disaster as divine.

Matthew Thomas, Cattleford

This is a transient life, the real life will come later. We as humans have got a warped sense about what this life means to us, we ignore the reality of the next world. So if your time is up and you die hopefully you were on the path of doing good. There is a story of Khizer & Moses, when the former kills a child and Moses is aghast. Khizer tells him that the child would have grown up and killed his parents for greed. So if Khizer knows that how can we question God when children pass away. As the article also points out, it's a test for the rest of us to see how we respond to the suffering of others. Maybe we can learn to look after the old folks in the neighbourhood when we are moved to help people as far away as Haiti?

Kaz, Ellicott City, USA

Debating the intentions of a mythological character which allegedly has an interest in allowing 'bad' things to happen on planet earth? Are we living in the 21st century or the 12th century ? Natural disasters, disease, accidents and co-incidences are all things that occur naturally and not as the result of the will of any fantastical all powerful Monster. Maybe a comet will hit the earth one day and maybe all that will be left will be a copy of Dr. Dolittle. Just because somebody wrote it down does not make it true.

Andrew Connor, Uxbridge

Perhaps you should include non god-based religions to get out of this dilemma. Try Buddhism for example.

Isabelle Clinton, Forest Row, United Kingdom

God has put us in a 'crucible' and he is very interested in how we cope by us invoking the law of love. No one is immune from tragedy, not least his own son Jesus. So, its more about loving our neighbours rather than puzzling why. We live in a dangerous world let no one doubt it. Some disasters are natural but many others are of our own making but throughout we must live the law of love.

Alan Smith, Preston, Lancashire

The Japanese (90% Buddhist) have a saying that pain is our best friend. Because for the most part we learn and grow the most from painful experiences. If we are not born new, but simply coming around for another shot at growth (reincarnation), then the notion of a child being pure is put aside. If pain is our friend, then the notion of pain as cruel is put aside. If death is not the end, then the notion of unfair or untimely death being the worst thing imaginable is put aside.

John Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma USA

A thoughtful article on an enduring problem. God is perfectly good and perfectly powerful. Haiti was fully within his control. Why did it happen? Because men's deeds are evil. The Haitians'? Not particularly - see Jesus on the Tower of Siloam - "repent, or you too will perish". Because there are murderers and rapists in the world? Not just them - there is no one good, not even one, all have turned away and fallen short of the glory of God.

Jon Hall, Jacksonville, Florida, USA

This is a very interesting article. It is a classic philosophy question that can never be convincingly answered. This article lists some interesting points. In one part, there is the argument that why can't god just create good people with free will? If god just created good people with free will, it logically follows that all their actions will always be good since they are good people. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of free will where you can choose your actions as opposed to being restricted only to good actions? It almost feels like an oxymoron to say that we should only have good people with free will. Secondly, in vedic philosophy there is a belief in the continuum of the soul. Many scientific studies and real world experiences show that this could be true. To believe or not is a question for another day. However, if we allow for this continuum then we can easily explain natural disasters (where even innocent babies die) by attributing the punishment to their past lives' actions, also known as Sanchita Karma in Sanskrit. The other answer to the question posed could just be that god's ways are so intricate and complex that to comprehend the greater good out of seemingly painful punishments are just beyond human comprehension. This is one of those questions that we could argue about all day and yet arrive at no answer.

KRL, Old Bridge, New Jersey

Having lost a sister to a brain tumour aged 49, and a close friend to cancer at the age of 30, and being a C of E priest, you might imagine this kind of matter has been a part of my own, and many others' formation. Archbishop Sentamu is right on one level; for the sake of those caught up in this tragedy we need to pray and act now, and think later. But for many of us there has already been much thought. John Polkinghorne and others successfully argue that free will is not just about humanity, it is also about the freedom of the universe to be what it is. It has to 'work' to make sense. In order for life to exist on this planet there simply has to be tectonic activity. Without the 'recycling' processes involved there would be insufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and earth would become a lifeless snowball. It has to be a dynamic system and given the freedom to be what it is. Likewise, without mutation there could be no progressive evolution. Most mutations are dead-ends, some are useful and retained if they provide breeding advantage, and some are deadly. But you cannot have one without another, at least not if you want life. Could God have done it differently? Probably. But then if his hand was that obvious, would we have the freedom to choose whether to seek him out? Probably not. But back to Archbishop Sentamu's sentiments; the importance of what needs to be done now far outweighs the philosophy of why it happened.

Paul, Birmingham

Race ?

While humanity continues to judge individuals based on arbitrary physical characteristics such as skin, hair or eye color and pretend that combinations of such characteristics constitute different "races" there will be an impediment to social progress. It has long been demonstrated by scientific research that all modern humans in fact belong to the same race and that these physical differences result from minor genetic variations. We are all decended from a population of only a few thousand who lived in Africa around 100,000 years ago at a time when modern humans were in danger of extinction.
To refer then to other individuals as a different race is clearly not correct.
The widely held perception that humans belong to different races is the root of many predjudices that should not exist and have no logical basis. These predjudices are based on primitive "in group out group" insticts and behavior which has also been observed in apes.
Differences in language and culture create the real barriers and we should all work to overcome our predjudices through education and develop tolerance and mutual respect.

Earth's population "exceeds limits"

[by Steven Duke from www.bbc.co.uk/news April 1, 2009]

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.
"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."
GM Foods 'needed'
A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.
"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.
"We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops," she told the BBC.

THE MOST POPULOUS NATIONS
China - 1.33bn
India - 1.16bn
USA - 306m
Indonesia - 230m
Brazil - 191m

"We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century."
Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.
"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."
In a wide ranging interview, Dr Fedoroff was asked if the US accepted its responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be driving human-induced climate change. "Yes, and going forward, we just have to be more realistic about our contribution and decrease it - and I think you'll see that happening."
And asked if America would sign up to legally binding targets on carbon emissions - something the world's biggest economy has been reluctant to do in the past - the professor was equally clear. "I think we'll have to do that eventually - and the sooner the better."
The full interview with Dr Nina Federoff can be heard on this week's edition of the new One Planet programme on the BBC World Service

Richard Dawkins on Charles Darwin

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news 14 February, 2009]

Oxford University's former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins, is one of the world's staunchest defenders of the theory of evolution. He is the author of The Selfish Gene and a well known atheist tract, The God Delusion. So how does he assess Darwin's ideas on the 200th anniversary of his birth?
The BBC World Service's Owen Bennett Jones spoke to Professor Dawkins.
RD: "Charles Darwin really solved the problem of existence, the problem of the existence of all living things - humans, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria. Everything we know about life, Darwin essentially explained."
OBJ: "Did he make any mistakes in your view?"
RD: "Yes he made some mistakes. He lived in the middle of the 19th Century, and, obviously, we know a lot more now than he knew. In particular, he got genetics all wrong. Nobody in the 19th Century knew much about genetics, and so naturally Darwin got that wrong. But given that, it's remarkable how much he got right."
OBJ: "But people say modern discoveries in genetics, actually confirm what Darwin was saying...?"
RD: "Very much so, yes, and it's amazing how far ahead of his time he was."
OBJ: "Right, so can you explain that to us? Basically, modern genetics confirms the principle, but he got the detail wrong, is that it?"
RD: "Yes, you need genetics in order to make Darwinian natural selection work. It depends upon genetics. Darwin didn't realise how much it depended upon what you could call "digital genetics" - the idea that a particular gene, you either have it or you don't.
"In Darwin's time people thought it was a bit like mixing substances - you've got some male substances and some female substances and you mix them together, and you got child substance. It's not like that at all.
"It's digital. You either get a gene or you don't. Nowadays with DNA of course we know that it's really like computer code, it's like reels and reels of computer tape. And little did Darwin know, he actually needed that for his theory to work.
"But nevertheless he got it astonishingly right. So you could almost say he nearly forecast digital genetics - although he didn't."
OBJ: "Do you believe his belief is compatible with a belief in God?"
RD: "Many people do, because there are plenty of clergymen, bishops, theologians and things who of course go along with evolution. They have no choice; the evidence is overwhelming. I personally think it's rather difficult, but that's my personal opinion and you'll find plenty of clergymen to disagree."
OBJ: "Because Darwin is now a very controversial figure, particularly in the United States?"
RD: "He's controversial amongst people who don't know anything, but if you talk to people who are actually educated, he's not really controversial. There's no controversy about the fact we are cousins of monkeys, cousins of cows, cousins of aardvarks. That's completely non-controversial among anyone who knows anything about science."
OBJ: "Did Darwin lose his faith?"
RD: "Yes, Darwin lost his faith gradually. As a young man he was destined for the church. He was training to be an Anglican clergyman at Cambridge [University], and then gradually throughout his life he lost his faith, partly because of personal tragedy - losing children and things like that, and partly because his science led him to see the superfluousness of a creator. He never described himself as an atheist; he ended up describing himself as an agnostic - the term which was coined by his friend T H Huxley.

What do you get if you divide science by God?

[www.bbc.co.uk/news March 24, 2009]

A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.
The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.
Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behaviour of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.
WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS?
Originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century
They discovered that light comes in discrete packets, or quanta, which we call photons
The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle says certain features of subatomic particles like momentum and position cannot be known precisely at the same time
Gaps remain, like attempts to find the 'God Particle' that scientists hope to spot in the Large Hadron Collider. It is required to give other particles mass
The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.
Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos "has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen."
D'Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately "veiled" from us.
The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it "Being".
In an effort to seek the answers to the "meaning of physics", I spoke to five leading scientists.

1. THE ATHEIST
Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the "chilling impersonality" of the universe.
He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning.
He says: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken.

2. THE SCEPTIC
The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness.
He has "no strong opinions" on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood.
"The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them," he has written.
In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST
Cambridge physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one.

Can science explain all of life's meaning?
Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn't think it? The answer is yes.
Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes.
Would it equal two even if the universe didn't exist? That is more tricky to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response.
Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that "contains" mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER
John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible.
The ordered universe science reveals is only what you'd expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them "intellectual cousins".
"Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful," he says.
If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST
Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era.
It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth.
Swimme believes that "the universe is attempting to be felt", which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.
Mark Vernon is author of After Atheism: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life
Which physicist do you most agree with? Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

As a Hindu I can agree with them all. There is a (centuries old) western short-sightedness approach to science that is generally backed up Abrahamic beliefs. Science is being polarised or is seen in that manner ie if A is right B must be wrong, rather like the concept of heaven and hell. In Hinduism and other 'Dharmic' beliefs it has always been said that we live in the age of "maya" or illusion or even 'veil' and that what we see is made from 'cosmic vibrations'. Nothing that we see is how it is, it is our eyes that can only take in limited information which our brain processes to fill in the gaps. Is a rock just a rock or is it billions of particles resonating at a certain frequency to make the 'image' of the rock 'seen' by our eyes. The answer is both! Seeing may be believing, but it depends on whether you see with your eyes or an electron microscope. Dipen, Stanmore

I am a physicist and evangelical Christian, so I think Penrose and Polkinghorne are closest to the truth. I'm pleased to hear that people are beginning to look again at the foundations of quantum theory. In recent decades physics has been dominated by what I call 'quantum mechanics' (like 'garage mechanics') - people who can do the sums but don't think about what they mean. The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist. Dave, St. Neots

I agree with Weinberg. The maths might show up the complexities in nature and point to some profound conclusions, but the whole idea of something supernatural pulling the levers of the universe just escapes me. Dan Wildsmith, Barnsley

When my ego is flaring I'm with the atheist simply because all thoughts, perceptions and concepts come from that wonderful delusional and often ignorant creature we call the mind. When the self is in check I'm with the sceptic...for the same reason! Only mankind's arrogance, brought about by that delusional self, has to believe they exist for some "special" purpose. Billy, garnerville, newyork, usa

Obviously the great Martin Rees, but for more detail and a lot of work on the scientific view [eg, ch.6 in "Exploring Reality"], I go with Polkinghorne. My own view is '99% Dawkins' - but what a difference 1% Christ makes. Your equation should be something about exobiology, or evolution of altruism: the Price equation, or just rB > C. Biology describes the world; physics is a special case. Valerie Jeffries, Faversham, England

As a Christian I would agree with John Polkinghorne. Science just reveals how awesome the world is, a world which God created and designed. It is ironic that many scientists try and disprove God but in many instances only demonstrate just how complex and wonderful the world is. There had to be an author of creation. We are not here by chance. Nathan Goodearl, Guildford,UK

I most agree with Martin Rees. He seems to accept that we are not currently in a position to understand the universe in it's entirety. I would be interested to hear his views on the so-called 'God Particle' (Higgs Boson). I fundamentally disagree with the view that science and religion are compatible and fail to see why some people who choose to exercise faith in a religious belief choose to do so via science. Religion can exist without science, and science without religion. Rachael Amato, Bristol

I agree with the Atheist. For as long as anyone can remember the things we don't understand have been given the explanation 'God', or 'Gods' and throughout history science, little by little, provides non-God explanations for things (suns, stars, comets, animals, plants etc.). This pattern looks set to repeat itself ad infinitum. In time we will be looking at our current religious theories and thinking how primitive and quite frankly wrong they look in the context of modern knowledge. But belief seems to be a need for many humans and I have no doubt their beliefs and Gods will move on in to the future gaps in our understanding. Julian Harrison, Shrewsbury

4. THE BELIEVER is correct InshAllah. Many scientific facts have been found to be consistent with The Quran. Science is the rational study of creation, and its facts are consistent with revelation. Saqib Pervaiz, Wolverhampton

The Atheist makes the most sense. The Universe is full of mystery that Mathematics and Physics will, in time, unravel. However, I don't understand why Steven Weinberg needs to believe that the Universe should have a personality and why he deems it as pointless. Everything in life is pointless from that point of view, experiences - my enjoyment of living is my spirituality, for me there is no God and why does that matter? David Hunt, Cambridge, UK

France chastises Pope on condoms

The French foreign ministry has voiced "sharp concern" following the Pope's rejection of condom use to fight Aids.
Benedict XVI, who is on a tour of Africa, said handing out condoms only increased the problem of HIV/Aids.
The Roman Catholic Church says marital fidelity and sexual abstinence are the best way to prevent the spread of HIV.
But France, echoing the reaction of some aid agencies, said it "voices extremely sharp concern over the consequences of [the Pope's comments]".
"While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life," foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.
The Pope arrived in Cameroon on Tuesday at the start of his week-long African tour.
He urged Christians everywhere to speak out against corruption and abuses of power.
"A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted by President Paul Biya, Cameroon's ruler for the past 26 years.
But he sparked controversy by telling reporters that HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".
The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer".
Some activists were dismayed by the approach, saying condoms were one of the few methods proved to stop the spread of HIV.
Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said: "His opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans."
Some 22 million people are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN figures for 2007. This amounts to about two-thirds of the global total.
The Pope said Catholicism faced a threat from superstition. On Wednesday, the Pope attended a gathering of more than 30 Cameroonian bishops in the capital, Yaounde.
He told the bishops they had to preserve traditional African families and protect the country's poor.
"In the context of globalisation with which we are all familiar, the church takes a particular interest in those who are most deprived," he said.
He said it was the duty of Christians to help to build "a more just world where everyone can live with dignity", the Associated Press reported.
The Pope also warned of a threat to the Catholic Church in Cameroon from evangelical movements and from the "growing influence of superstitious forms of religion".
Earlier on Wednesday, he held a private meeting with Mr Biya at the presidential palace.
The BBC's Caroline Duffield in Yaounde says Mr Biya's consistent electoral victories have been widely condemned as fraudulent.
Having spoken out publically against corruption, many Cameroonians will be hoping that the Pope delivered his message in private as well, says our correspondent.